The New Zealand Educational Institute represents 50,000 teachers, and says they need a 16 percent boost to address difficulties in getting and retaining good teachers. Nurses want a similar boost, but have been offered about 9 percent - which is still a lot more than what the Ministry of Education is offering teachers.

"The Government needs to make a huge investment, like the nurses," said Ms Oliveira. "We've sat around, we've been patient for nine years. We've been given more jobs, we've been given more workload on top of everything else that we're doing."